


Hiding Out in the Back Together

by indevan



Series: Rock Band AU [12]
Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, M/M, Multi, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-20
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2018-12-31 23:48:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12143766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: No one knows they’re together now, not even their families.  Trunks’s entire life has been in front of an audience and so has Goten’s.  Not just press and gossip sites, either, but their families are so nosy and loud.  They want to keep themselves to themselves--if only for a little while





	Hiding Out in the Back Together

**Author's Note:**

> this is obviously way, way, way down the line in terms of time in this universe but i love these boys and wanted to write them

It’s so hot that he can smell the flowers baking in the air.  Spotlights and cameras surround them and someone is putting makeup on his face.  They’re making a music video.

They’re filming at a villa with a lush, beautifully tended garden.  Trunks is playing the beautifully sensual spectre of a boy who haunts the tortured artist, played by Goten.  Goten isn’t at all sexy in it the way he is, partly because his uncle is the director and partly because any time he tries to be sexy, he ends up looking a little bit goofy.

Trunks thinks the premise is wickedly cool.  Goten is this morose, sad-eyed artist who comes to his family’s old villa to deal with his artist’s block.  The first day, he sees a boy in the garden.  He becomes consumed by the idea of him and makes him his muse.  He tries to find him but he always eludes him, almost as if he’s part of the garden itself.  He draws the boy feverishly, losing sleep as he tries to capture his beauty in sketches.  One night, the boy comes into the villa and beckons for the artist to follow him.  They run through the house, the boy always just too far out of reach.  They make it to a balcony where the boy kisses the artist before pushing him off.  As he falls, the artist turns and sees nothing there, making it ambiguous as to whether or not the boy was real.

“You’re so gorgeous,” the makeup artists coos. “Your bone structure, my God.”

He looks at himself in the mirror.  It reminds him, somehow, of his dad.  His dad’s mother was a semi-famous stage actress and when she played Queen Titania, his dad--as a little toddlertot--was one of the other fairies.  He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen the photo hanging in his grandfather’s house.  He wore gossamer wings and had glitter on the tops of his cheeks and, in the picture, he was actually smiling.

“I know,” he says.

He looks at Goten, who’s talking to his uncle.  Lapis is smoking and nodding to whatever he’s saying.

This isn’t their first music video but it’s the first one presented as a film.  Normally, they simply play one of their songs over concert footage or film them playing in a soundstage.  This is next level.  Trunks spends the day putting his face in white roses and singing his own lyrics against a whole bank of them.  He loops his arms through one of the classical statues in the garden and lets his body dangle.

When the light gets sharp and orange, Lapis calls an end to shooting for the day.  They’ve rented the villa for the shoot so long as they stay in the rooms that they weren’t filming in.  It feels haunted and Trunks is unsettled as he washes the makeup off of his face.  He lifts his face and lets out a startled yelp.  He isn’t sure when Goten came in his bathroom but he sees him reflected behind him in the mirror.

“Am I that scary?” he asks, voice teasing.

Trunks scoffs and the response he gets is Goten wrapping his arms around his waist and pressing a kiss to the back of his neck.  He turns and captures his lips.  No one knows they’re together now, not even their families.  Trunks’s entire life has been in front of an audience and so has Goten’s.  Not just press and gossip sites, either, but their families are so nosy and loud.  They want to keep themselves to themselves--if only for a little while.

“Where’s your uncle?” Trunks asks.

“On the phone, saying goodnight to Bardock.”

He knows it’s wrong but Lapis is so deadpan that Trunks used to sometimes thinks he was a robot.  He sees him with Goten’s other uncle, though, and their son and he knows that summation is wrong.

“I don’t want him to walk in on us.  The doors don’t lock.”

Goten smirks and kisses him again.

“We’ll be quiet.”

\--

A week later, Goten meets his brother for lunch.  Gohan has let his hair grow out a little.  When they were kids, he had always worn it a little bit long and Goten had missed it.

“How was the shoot?” he asks once they’ve ordered.

“Good, good.  It should be done in a little bit, they say.” He yawns. “Not just the video but we have the new single dropping soon, too.”

Gohan looks at him and gives him a sort of Look that’s all too similar to the one given to him by their mother.

“What?”

“You seem tired is all.”

It’s definitely not “all” and Gohan got that directly from their mom, too.  She’s an expert at getting to the root of the problem by making little, seemingly innocuous statements.  He’s seen is similarly employed by FBI interrogators and Tyra Banks on episodes of _America’s Next Top Model,_ when she wants to get one of the aspiring models to cry.

But he _is_ tired.  He and Trunks have been going nonstop for weeks, with recording and the shooting and spending time with each other.  He’s seen it, too, his eyes look bruised and he feels weariness tug on his bones.

“What about you?”

The easiest way to get Gohan off his case is to ask him about his life.  Sure enough, the second he says it, he gets flustered and begins toying with the square of napkin the restaurant gave them as coasters.

“What about me?”

“Haven’t you been working on something?”

He waves a hand. “Maybe.  Piccolo wants me to feature on this new album he wants to do but nothing for us.  We’re taking a break.”

He seems cagey and Goten leans in, propping his chin up on his hands.

“How come?”

Gohan caves so easily under pressure that it’s almost laughable.  Barely any prodding and he’s sagging in his seat, ready to spill everything and their appetizers haven’t even arrived.

“So, Videl’s pregnant.”

That isn’t what he expected to hear.

“She’s what?”

“Pregnant.  We haven’t told anyone yet so...don’t tell mom and dad until I get to, okay?”

Goten nods and makes an okay-sign with one hand.  Something pokes at the edge of his brain and he says it without thinking.

“Are you gonna do a test on who the dad is?”

Gohan’s lips twist and Goten ducks his head.  He and his dumb mouth are saved by the server coming back with their appetizers, at least for a minute.

“No,” Gohan says. “Whether it’s mine or Dende’s it doesn’t matter.  It’s all three of ours, regardless.”

He nods.  That makes sense.

“Mom is gonna freak.”

“Is she?”

He nods and reaches for his soda to take a sip.

“She wants grandkids, I think.  She misses us being little kids.”

“Why?  She still has you.”

Around his straw, Goten makes a face.  He has fantasies of maybe moving in with Trunks but they both still live at their parents’ houses.  And who could blame them?  Trunks’s parents live in a freaking palatial penthouse and the place his dad bought when their band finally made it big--truly big--is nothing to sneeze at.  Even so, he knows he’s not a kid anymore and his parents know it, too.

Goten picks up one of his potato skins and sinks his teeth into it.  Either way, he thinks it’s pretty cool that he’s going to be an uncle.  When it’s all out in the open, he’ll have to talk to Uncle Raditz about it--he became an uncle at a pretty young age, too, after all.

“So, the shoot went well?”

He nods around a mouthful of potato and cheese.

“Yeah,” he says once he swallowed, “It’s really nifty, like, doing a film sorta thing rather than the usual video.  And Trunks was--”

Goten cuts himself off.  Keeping their relationship to themselves probably doesn’t involve rhapsodising about how gorgeous and talented his boyfriend is in a TGI Fridays.

“Really good.  He’s born to be on camera, the handsome bastard.” He forces out a laugh that Gohan doesn’t buy for a minute.

It says enough without saying it all.  He doesn’t say how he lights up like a matinee idol the second the camera’s on him.  How good he looked during the shoot in the loose, white button-up shirt he wore.  How it felt to kiss him in front of others, even if it was only for show--like how it used to be.

“I see.”

Gohan’s making that Face again and he wants to chuck a potato skin at him.

“Shut up.”

His brother simply arches his eyebrows and Goten wonders if maybe he has just as many tells as he does.

\--

The day the video drops, he and Trunks celebrate in his bedroom.  It’s the middle of the day and people are already blowing up about it.  Goten thinks it looks so eerie and cool.  The way it fits together with their song is so seamless.  The increasing frenzy of vocals at the end, getting faster and more frantic as his character chases the boy through the villa.  The repetition of _“bend to me...kill for me...die for me…”_ when he’s finally pushed.

Trunks kisses him and Goten puts his teeth around his lip piercing, tugging gently and getting him to give a little gurgle of pain.

“We’re artists!” he crows and Trunks laughs.

They’re half-dressed, kissing on his bed.  For some reason, he remembers being little and asking Marron to teach him to play drums because Trunks said he’d be his best friend if he learned to drum.  She had, but then Trunks had shown up and said he didn’t care if he could drum or not--he just wanted to see how much he wanted to be his friend.  How, after that, they were inseparable.  How he realized his want for him years and years later, felt it cramp his stomach when they would play a part onstage and then offstage Trunks was kissing other boys.

Now it doesn’t matter, he thinks.  He and Trunks are together, now, and their video is popular and they’re going to be just as famous as their dads.

Goten lets his hands drift down Trunks’s abs to the waistband of his joggers.  He nods his permission and he inches them down, hooking his fingers in the waistband of his briefs as he does.  They’re halfway down his ass when the door opens.  In all their excitement for each other and the positive feedback, he had forgotten to lock it.

Trunks freezes above him and, in unison, they turn to look at the door.  His mother is on the other side, holding a stack of freshly folded laundry on the flat of one hand and the other resting on the knob.  Her hand goes slack and Goten’s laundry topples to the floor.

“Chi-Chi, have you seen my effects pedal?”

His dad pops up over her shoulder and his eyes widen in shock.  Goten tugs his Trunks’s pants back up but the damage has been done.

“Kakarrot, c’mon, we gotta go.  You know how he gets.”

He didn’t even know his uncle was over but, sure enough, Uncle Raditz’s wild head of hair appears behind his dad.  What’s next?  His grandparents?

“Dad!  I wasn’t done talking!”

Well, he reasons, it’s _a_ Bardock, at least.

“Mom,” he starts. “Uh.  We were--”

“It’s about time!” his dad exclaims.

“Honestly,” his mother adds.

Goten sags against the mattress.  He’d been worried about this.  His family would be His Family about it and there went any privacy he and Trunks had.  Maybe he _should_ look into moving out with him.  He gives Trunks a pout and squeezes his shoulder to let him know that he needs him to say something.

“Um...don’t tell my parents?”

_That’s helpful…_

“We wanted to keep our relationship to ourselves for a little bit,” Goten explains. “Um...right?”

Trunks nods. “Our video dropped today.  Go watch that instead of us.”

His uncle folds his arms and smirks.  Bardock elbows his way past Goten’s parents and his blue eyes widen in surprise.

“Oh, wow!  You finally got together!”

Goten cringes.  Even his teenaged cousin was expecting it.  He has to think...has to find a way for them not to make a big deal about it.  A way for them to just leave and let him and Trunks live their lives and go back to fooling around.

“Videl’s pregnant!” he exclaims.

It gets them to leave but he’s pretty sure that the reprieve is short-lived.  His brother is going to _kill_ him.

“Is she really?” Trunks asks once they’ve gone.

“Uh-huh.  And I told Gohan I wouldn’t tell anyone so.  That’s a thing.”

Trunks laughs and leans down to press his forehead against his.  The door’s left open so they can’t go back to what they’re doing but he savors the solitude as much as he can.  Trunks reaches down and strokes from hair away from his forehead.

“So...you wanna watch our video again?”

It isn’t what he’s expecting but he laughs and nods.

“Definitely.”

**Author's Note:**

> http://vertigoats.tumblr.com


End file.
